


Asset

by Eligh



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Rebellion, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 09:52:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eligh/pseuds/Eligh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil wouldn’t call himself an abolitionist. Not because he agreed with the Practice—far from it, obviously—but because abolitionists got dragged out behind anonymous government buildings and shot in the head. </p>
<p>Then again, some people might just be worth the fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Asset

**Author's Note:**

> There's a bit in here that makes reference to possible non-con in Clint's past. It is in no way graphic or detailed.

“Everyone on Earth deserves the right to be free,” Phil’s mother told him the night of his sixth birthday, smoothing her hand over his forehead and kissing him firmly there, her long brown hair brushing against his cheeks. Phil wriggled, too old for good-night kisses from his mother. He was only vaguely aware of the narrow luck he’d benefited from today.

Assets are drawn at six. One-eighth of the population, pulled for the Practice by random chance.

(Or not-so-random, maybe. It was odd that a lottery seemed to randomly pick children from lower-income families, the foster system, poor and middle class neighborhoods. Odd that politicians and the casual rich never seemed to have their children pulled.)

“If I’d been pulled, would you have let me go?” Phil asked, too young to understand what he was asking of his mother.

She smiled. “No, baby. We would’ve run.” She leaned forward and kissed him again, and Phil didn’t complain this time. He may have only been six, but he could still see the tears in her eyes and feel how her hands were shaking so very slightly.  

“It’s against the law to run,” he said slowly, unaware of how important this conversation would be to him in the years to come. “They said so at school.”

“Oh, baby,” she sighed. “Sometimes things are just wrong, law or no. And we have to work to change it, no matter what the cost.”

~

It took six months before Phil’s mother’s protests landed her in prison, six months and one day before Phil was placed in foster care, and sixteen years before he saw her face again. Not in person, of course—her picture was handed to him via a file folder stamped with words like ‘asset’ and ‘criminal’ and ‘dissent’ and ‘deceased.’ 

But by this point in his life, Phil’d been trained, and trained well. When he took the folder, his hands barely shook.

~

Phil worked his way through school and joined the military as a lieutenant right out of college. He played nice with the rest of the troops and followed his given orders and wore the uniform, but at night he snuck rations to the assets his unit used as the bomb-disposal squad.

There was one asset that Phil liked especially, a gorgeous man with skin the color of toffee. His file told Phil several things, namely: his name was Thiago; he’d been pulled in his late teens as a consequence for attending asset protests turned riots; he was born in Brazil; he’d had two previous owners before the United States Army bought his papers.

Phil knew others things, too, data that wasn’t stored in manila file folders and on flash drives. He knew that Thiago had a wicked, sad smile and could laugh even through the worst details. He was smart, better educated than most assets, though he hid his sharp mind behind barely respectful subservience. He liked days when the mess made shepherd’s pie and always shared the loaves of bread Phil managed to sneak into the asset barracks.

Phil also knew that he had to be careful around Thiago, wary of how easy it was to smile at his jokes, of how pleased he was when he was able to brush their hands together. He had to constantly remind himself that it was dangerous to get attached. Illegal. A court-marshal-able offence.

He still snuck in food, and once, when Thiago rested the palm of his hand briefly against Phil’s cheek in thanks, Phil leaned into his touch.

Of course it was still the Army, and there were eyes everywhere. It was only a matter of time—a little shy of six months, actually—before Phil’s nighttime runs were noticed and he was written up. After a lengthy—and frankly terrifying—investigation, Phil ended up reassigned to a relatively quiet base in Egypt and gained a black mark on his record, the first of several notes that contained words like ‘sympathizer’ and ‘surveillance’ and ‘concern.’  

Six weeks later, Phil only threw up twice when he found out that all of his old unit’s assets had been killed, used as cannon-fodder.

~

Phil wouldn’t call himself an abolitionist. Not because he agreed with the Practice—far from it, obviously—but because abolitionists got dragged out behind anonymous government buildings and shot in the head. He wasn’t a rebel like his mother, or a conscientious objector like his father, because being those things in today’s world had gotten them both killed.

Phil figured he couldn’t do much good in the world if he was dead.

~

After the army, Phil was scooped up by the NSA. They were impressed enough with his tactical skills and calm in the field to ignore the ‘sympathizer’ label, and for a few months Phil thought he might have found his place.

Things changed, though, when with added clearance came added responsibilities, and after a while Phil had found himself wrangling his agency’s purchases on almost a daily basis. The NSA bought large lots of assets, often on the cheap, which resulted in a state termed ‘acceptable turnover.’ It took a while before he noticed, and in fact in his first three years with the agency, Phil hadn’t known what exactly that phrase meant, hadn’t connected the term with the assets’ disappearances. Looking back, maybe it was just because he hadn’t wanted to think about it too hard.

But he’d still been young, and surprisingly naïve, and sort of an idiot to think he could stay distanced forever. The day’d eventually come where Phil was ordered to Disposal Floor (sub C) and shown a group of malnourished, terrified assets. It was inevitable in the line of work he was in. He should have seen it coming.

They’d called it culling, phrased it unremarkably and whitewashed the fact that they were _murdering_ people in cold fucking blood. That day, Phil’d fought down his nausea, spat in his superior’s face, and earned himself a dishonorable discharge. He was informed that with his history, he was lucky he wasn’t being shot for treason.

For all that, the assets still died, because assets weren’t really people.

~

After the NSA, Phil spent precisely thirty-six hours consulting for a security firm that could perhaps be charitably referred to as ‘dubiously moral.’ The end of those thirty-six hours found Phil standing back-to-back with a terrifying man who hadn’t stopped firing his gun at the horde of insurgents even though Phil’d watched him take a bolt of rebar directly to one eye.

When the echoes of the gunshots finally faded, the man turned to him, grinned, and asked if Phil was looking for work.

“Depends on the kind of work,” Phil told him, trying very hard not to stare at the ruin of the guy’s face.

“Sure as fuck more interesting than this,” the man said, slapping Phil on the back. “More legal, too.” His grin turned dangerous and Phil, noting the slight increase of blood dripping down the guy’s face, offered him a handkerchief. “Nick Fury,” the man introduced himself, (which was ridiculous, that couldn’t be a real name) offering to shake with the hand not busy stemming the hemorrhaging.

“Phil—”

“Coulson, yea I know. Tell me, Phil. What are your feelings on superheroes?”

Phil lifted an eyebrow. Interesting, indeed.

~

Phil’s first contact with asset Barton started just like any other assignment: a file left anonymously, square in the center of his desk. The only difference that marked today’s folder was a stamp in the upper left hand corner declaring ‘New Acquisition’ in bold, red lettering.

“Goddammit,” Phil muttered, low under his breath, because even (especially) at S.H.I.E.L.D. the walls have ears (and eyes, and probably fingers and tongues and noses). Sometimes he hated his job.

S.H.I.E.L.D., so far, had been different with their use of assets. When Fury’d handpicked him on that battlefield in Madrid, one of the first things Phil’d done was to make sure that he made his distaste for the Practice clear. And in all this time, Fury’d never seemed to have a problem with that; more, he respected it. So while S.H.I.E.L.D. still used assets, Phil could deal with it. They didn’t cull, they didn’t mistreat. In fact, they almost treated them like humans, and Phil… well, Phil was still uncomfortable. But he handled it.

But now, six years after Fury’d lifted him up like the hand of god, Phil had apparently once again found himself high enough in the command structure of S.H.I.E.L.D. that it would look odd if he didn’t handle the occasional asset. Evidently even Fury couldn’t protect him from the Practice any longer.

Hence the folder, and the accusing red letters, and the single name in neat Courier typeset on the forms inside. Barton, it said, and there was no picture.

Phil put off the trek to the lower holding cells until there was no other way around it. It always felt like a punch to the gut to type in his passcodes when he visited down here, like each beep condoned the Practice and the people that traded in flesh. Phil just set his jaw and blanked his face, breezed past the bored guards, and found the cell.

It was a shared holding cell, but Phil had a sneaking suspicion which of the assembled assets was his based on the way the nine other men in the room were pressed against the south wall. The tenth, a solidly built dirty blond thirty-something (maybe twenty-something; assets lived hard lives) was sitting straight-backed on one of the north wall’s built-in bunks. Phil cleared his throat and eyed the man. Hooded blue eyes met his for half a second, then dropped, properly subservient.

Phil frowned, barely a downtick at the corners of his mouth, and tapped the edge of the file folder against his open palm. “Barton. To me.” The tenth man stood smoothly, shot the other nine an utterly unreadable look (they all flinched, practically as one) and stepped close to the bars.

(Of course Phil was right in guessing that one was his. Fucking Fury.)

“I’d prefer not to have to restrain you,” he told Barton, eying him with more intent now that he was certain that this was indeed his new asset. The man was too thin, obviously malnourished, but the muscles on his arms—well. At least it was clear why S.H.I.E.L.D. had bought him.

“You won’t need to, sir. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Mm,” Phil hummed, satisfied. He waved to the nearest guard and ordered the cell open, pressing his codes into the electronic transfer of ownership paperwork when presented with them. Barton stayed close, his head down, his face zeroed. Phil led him up toward his office and ignored how badly he wanted to throw up.

~

Turned out, Phil’s new asset could shoot.

Good _god_ , could he shoot. Phil watched him for two hours, ordering a weapons change every fifteen minutes. Barton didn’t miss, not even once. Not on the hardest shots, miniscule flying button-sized targets designed by Stark himself. Not hanging from his knees on a shaking platform. Not with his eyes closed.

“Do you have a preferred weapon?” Phil asked eventually, and Barton looked at him, startled.

“Um. A—a bow? Sir.”

Phil nodded. “I’ll work on that.” He paused. “Recurve? Compound? Composite?”  

The look that question got him was… exquisite. Barton’s whole face lit up with a smile that made him look ten years younger, and Phil blinked, something twisting tight in his chest. _Asset_ , he reminded himself.

Barton claimed preference for the recurve and proceeded to follow that up with spending the next twenty minutes waxing rhapsodic about the draw and the moment of release, how everything narrowed to a perfect point where he could breathe and think and the focus was crystal clear.

“It’s freeing,” he sighed, and then seemed to realize what he’d said and snapped his mouth shut. But Phil let the corner of his lips twitch up and Barton relaxed, the tension bleeding from his shoulders in slow increments.

“Nothing wrong with that,” Phil murmured, and Barton shot him another (significantly more hesitant) smile.

~

Six weeks later, Phil was on an op in Calcutta. It was dark and confusing, with people screaming and civilians everywhere, and there’d been an explosion that had left Phil temporarily half-deaf and with white spots floating in his eyes. Barton was hovering at his shoulder (via regs regarding new assets), silent and unhappy, but he was so still that by the time Phil was pointing his sniper rifle toward a crowded marketplace, he’d completely forgotten that Barton was even there.

“Fire at will,” came the order. “Aim for the gas tanks, we’ll take the whole square. The ones trapped down there are just assets. Acceptable collateral.”

Anger then, deep in Phil’s gut, because S.H.I.E.L.D. was supposed to be better than this. His mouth was twisted in a snarl before he’d even realized he’d made the face and he’d lodged the barrel of the rifle against the windowsill and _yanked_ before he remembered he wasn’t alone in the room.

He met Barton’s eyes (wide, startled, and full of something like hope) as he pressed his earpiece in deeper and dropped the ruined rifle to the ground.

“Negative. My weapon was damaged. I’m unable to take the shot.”

Phil’s superior sounded annoyed. “Your asset’s there, isn’t he? The one with the crazy aim? Tell him to take it.”

Phil looked down at Barton’s hand, clenched tight around the grip of his bow, one finger worrying the arrow rest. “Negative, base. He lost his weapon.”

Barton’s eyes crinkled with a hint of confusion, and Phil licked his lips. ‘I’ll get you a new one,’ he mouthed, and slowly, Barton nodded. The bow disappeared somewhere between that house and their extraction point, and Barton stared at him the whole flight back. Phil pretended not to notice.

~

It took six months before the powers-that-be determined Barton’s full readiness for solo field ops, and six months and one day before Barton disappeared from under the eyes of his handlers and Phil received a panicked phone call from agents on assignment in Italy.

After he’d put the phone down, Phil sighed, fought down a smile, and leaned back in his chair.  He’d give Barton a day’s head start before he started (half-heartedly) looking for him. That Barton’d managed to slip away from Woo was impressive, actually. If he was able to find his freedom, Phil wasn’t about to begrudge him that.

~

A freelance bounty hunter brought Barton in six days later, towing him through S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters by a chain wrapped too-tight around his wrists. He was beaten and staggering, and dripped blood on the floor of Phil’s office while Phil paid the man, stone-faced and unhappy.

The second the door closed behind the bounty hunter, Barton dropped to his knees, bowed his head, and froze, breathing in raggedly. Phil stared down at him (because he’d _hoped_ , and as… upsetting… as it would have been to never see Barton again, it would have meant he’d had a chance for a better life) and thought about how he was supposed to punish him.

He sat down in his chair, instead.

“Goddammit, Barton,” he breathed.

(Because it hadn’t taken six months for Phil to compromise himself. Hadn’t taken six weeks, or even six days, either. Six hours, maybe, yea, that was more realistic. He’d been lost since that first smile on the range, compromised by a man talking about the meditative qualities of the fletching on arrows. Phil was fucked.)

On the ground, Barton flinched once before drifting his bloodied hands to his belt, the shaking growing more pronounced with every second going by. He unbuckled it slowly, a rasp of leather over metal shocking Phil into the realization of just what Barton was about to offer up. He recoiled, fingers tight on the arms of his chair.

“What are you doing?”

“You’ll want to show me how you own me,” Barton mumbled, his voice thick through a broken nose and split lips. “I won’t fight it. I know what to do, sir.”

“Jesus,” Phil spat, aghast. “Stop, _stop it._ I am not going to rape you.” He was off his chair with no conscious thought, brushing Barton’s hands away, buckling up his belt for him. Barton lifted his head and stared, shocked and a little hopeful, and Phil was _sick_ to _death_ of that fucking expression. He shook his head, lips pressed tight. “I’m not going to do anything to you except make you report to medical. Just—”

Barton’s eyes were entirely too sharp.

Fucking danger. Fucking sense of morals. God- _fucking_ -dammit. Phil was almost forty years old, for god’s sake. He shouldn’t— _couldn’t_ —

“I will never hurt you,” Phil promised, low and so, _so_ , inappropriate. His hand drifted up, fingers gentle against Barton’s chest. He could feel his heart beating under the skin there, a little fast. Scared. He didn’t want Baron to be scared, not now. Not ever.

(Rule one: assets aren’t people.)

“When I can, I will stop other people from hurting you. I am so sorry this happened. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it.”

(Rule two: always remember to assert authority over your assets. Don’t let them think they deserve anything from you.)

“If you need anything, I will help you. If you _want_ anything, I will get it. I promise.”

(Rule three: don’t give assets hope. There is no hope.)

“I’ll find a way to get you out of this.”

Yea. Phil was _fucked._

~

“Sir?” Phil asked, letting his fingers rest lightly on the edge of Fury’s desk. It was immaculate, spotless, not a discarded shred of paper or half-completed form anywhere. His pens were in a neat, S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued holder. There was no dust on his lamp.

“You took Barton off-base.”

“I did.”

“Why, may I ask?”

Phil sighed. “Is this on the record, sir?”

Fury shifted in his leather chair. It creaked, and the look he gave Phil was one of his blandest. “You know it is.”

“Mm,” Phil agreed. Ah, lying on record. Court-martial, here he comes.

(Bullet in the brain, here he comes.)

“Personal discretion, sir. He _is_ my asset. In light of his recent escape attempt, I wanted to fully utilize his… skill sets.” The pause was deliberate. Let the people listening in think what they want. By the time they realize any different, they’ll be gone. “Headquarters leaves a bit to be desired in terms of privacy.”

“I see,” Fury mused, and Phil may have been imagining things, but the glint coming from his eye looked… pleased. And not about Phil’s words, because Phil had never been well-practiced in hiding rage and he _knew_ that his eyes didn’t reflect his tone. And Fury always looked him straight in the eye.

“See you Monday, Agent Coulson.”

“Monday,” Phil confirmed, worried pressure easing like a boiler letting off steam. Fury was giving him the weekend to disappear. Nice, that.

~

It took six months before Phil really felt some modicum of safety, hidden in an undisclosed location in the backwoods of Canada. It took six months and one day for Phil to wake up next to Barton (Clint) and happily receive a sleepy good-morning kiss.

(It took six months, one day, and forty-five minutes—give or take—before Phil was sobbing his release into Clint’s broad shoulders, pressing deep, Clint’s legs wrapped tight around his waist, Clint’s come slick between their stomachs.)

“You’re an abolitionist,” Clint whispered into his chest, later.

“Shut the hell up,” Phil murmured, half-asleep again already but willing to wake up for this. For Clint. “You’ll get me shot.”

Clint grinned into his neck and Phil ducked down, pressing a kiss against Clint’s side where a long scar covered what had once been the location of Clint’s tracking device. “We got a message from Fury last night,” he said, purposefully brushing his lips over sensitive skin and smiling again when it pebbled under his touch.

“Oh?”

“Stark’s in. The fight’s coming.”

“You rebel,” Clint murmured.

“Mm,” Phil agreed. 


End file.
